


For This

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Emotionally Constipated Thorin, Giveaway, M/M, Social Anxiety, Stress Baking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 19:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6207394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin Durin had lived in his new flat for approximately eighty four minutes when things started to go terribly, terribly wrong. The wrongness came in the form of a package, delivered to his door, wrapped in brown paper and string, with a small tag wishing him a very sincere welcome to the building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For This

**Author's Note:**

> A giveaway fic for the lovely yungarnet, which I think went a little off the rails from your original prompt, but I do hope that you enjoy it still. :)

Thorin Durin had lived in his new flat for approximately eighty four minutes when things started to go terribly, terribly wrong.

The wrongness came in the form of a package, delivered to his door, wrapped in brown paper and string, with a small tag wishing him a very sincere welcome to the building.

For most people, this would not be the harbinger of doom, but for Thorin- well.

Thorin did not like people.

That, at least, was what his brother and sister – even on occasion his older nephew – had to say on the matter. He thought that the assessment of his character was rather flawed, personally. He didn’t dislike all people, after all.

He just didn't like spending time with them.

His last apartment had been a beautiful place, all original features and strange crooked corners and interior stained glass that seemed to serve no function but to look beautiful. He had enjoyed his time there dearly, in every regard but for the neighbours, a motly collection of rather sociable middle-class couples who liked to host regular building dinner parties that he was shanghaied into attending by the virtue of his sister and her wife living in the same building.

He was not a man of many words, and certainly not a man who enjoyed expending those words on the rather inane babble of couples who seemed only able to discuss their children’s bathroom habits and attempt to set Thorin up with any number of “absolutely wonderful” friends and family members whose perpetual singledom seemed to offend them in a very personal way.

Thorin did not want to be set up with anyone, thank you very much, regardless of their opinions of his relationship status (which he had hidden on his facebook profile some years ago for that very same reason) were.

In the end he had left the building simply because the lease was up and the owner of the apartment was unwilling to continue renting it out – he probably would have continued to put up with the unpleasant dinner parties for some years further in order to continue enjoying the dark stained wooden floors and open fireplaces, but even he had to yield to the tides of landlord’s whims. His new place was very pleasant too, with clean lines and some beautifully preserved mouldings, and a log burner in the living room. Even better it came fully furnished, with a number of comfortable chairs and sofas, dark wooden bookcases and some genuinely beautiful old woven rugs, which meant that he did not have to engage in any form of shopping for the new place, much to his gratification.

The only thing he had to bring apart from his clothes and linens were the boxes of books (mostly poetry), his music and instruments and a few framed photographs, which made up the bulk of his possessions. Moving the piano had been a bit of a pain, but heavily tipping the movers always helped.

But he had hoped (quite fervently, if he were going to admit to such a thing, which he never would) that his new establishment would not warrant for any neighbours with any particular interest in him – in an ideal world, the rest of the building would have been populated by quiet, polite people who harboured absolutely no interest in him whatsoever, and certainly no desire to establish anything more than an acquaintance that required nothing but a nod when they passed each other on the stairwell.

It seemed, however, that his hopes were not to be met. For a neighbour had left him a care package.

He glanced up and down the corridor from his own doorway, half-hoping to catch sight of the neighbour who had left the gift, so that he could return it. But since the criminal did not seem to be lingering, he picked it up, carrying it inside with the caution that one would normally give to an undetonated missile.

Thorin peeled back the brown paper carefully, and sighed in some frustration at the unmarked box within. Removing the lid, he was somewhat disappointed to find four small cakes nestled between tissue paper, as well as a small paper bag of what, he could only assume from the smell, were freshly ground coffee beans.

With a grunt, he took that through to the kitchen, searching among his scant possessions for a moment until he found his cafetiere. The cakes he would save for his nephews, who would no doubt get much more pleasure from the delicately iced things than he would. The other, gift, however, he would concede to use – and as the fragrant steam from his pot drifted slowly around his face, he could not bring himself to regret it.

As the unknown neighbour had rightly predicted, he had not yet had time to go shopping, and the coffee at least was very much appreciated.

Not that he would admit to such a thing.

 

* * *

 

The package had come unsigned, and he had no idea from which neighbour it had been delivered – but indeed, to his rather pleasant surprise, the expected call from the gift-giver never came, and his first week went by in peace. Several people introduced themselves on the stairs or in the corridors, but with nothing more than the expected British formality, hurrying on their way as soon as they could.

All in all, he was quite happy with that arrangement. And since the coffee had been rather good, and the boys had enjoyed their cakes, he couldn’t find it in himself to complain any more than he would have done normally.

But, bright and early on his seventh day in the house, as he left the apartment to go to work, he found another package. This one bore the rather cheerful message wishing him congratulations on his first week in his new apartment, and once more it was unsigned: Thorin left it on the doorstep in hopes that it would be collected once more by the time he returned, but on his arrival back in the early evening he realised that it would not be so.

He took it in with an irritated noise.

This one contained delicate pastries, dusted in icing sugar, a loose leaf tea which he resolved to give to Dis at the next opportunity, and a little block of fudge, which he was quite certain was homemade, and which he was quite annoyed to discover was actually rather delicious.

The next time he ran into a neighbour on the stairs – old Mr Gamgee, if Thorin remembered his name rightly enough, he ignored his normal rule of only nodding a greeting, and deigned to speak to the man, who was a pleasant enough fellow, with laughter lines around his old eyes.

“Good morning,” he said, a little stiffly, and the man nodded back, not halting in his slow ascent of the stairs. “I don’t suppose you know who has been leaving packages at my door, do you?”

Mr Gamgee nodded, his stick tapping at the stairs.

“Well now,” he said, huffing a little. “Little cakes, are they, fancy little things?”

Thorin nodded.

“That’ll be Mr Bilbo, that will.” Mr Gamgee told him. “Nice enough fellow, though a bit odd, according to some, though I’ve only ever good things to say about him. He owns the building, you know – lives in the penthouse, likes to leave welcome gifts for the new arrivals, for birthdays and special events, that kind of thing. You shouldn’t take no offense to it.”

Thorin started, just a little – he hadn’t realised that his displeasure had been so obvious, and Mr Gamgee’s tone had turned surprisingly stern, as if to suggest that if Thorin ever did voice his annoyance, that the old man would be after him with his stick to give him a good hiding for daring to offend the man’s clearly rather beloved Mr Bilbo – whoever that was. Thorin had signed on to the apartment through a letting agency, and he wasn’t certain that there had ever been any mention of a live in landlord.

“Thank you,” he offered the old man, who was already half way up the steps.

“Not to worry, Mr Thorin,” the old man called out, sounding much more cheerful again now. “Mind how you go, and you have a good day now!”

 

* * *

 

The secretive Mr Bilbo left him another package, though this one came at the end of Thorin’s first month. He had rather hoped that the lack of gifts for the past few weeks had meant that they would stop, but since he still had not heard from the elusive landlord, he had rather thought that there would be no more packages. But, on one weekend, when he opened the door to find a rather beautiful collection of small glass dishes, containing a creamy looking substance that Dis would later inform him were rather exquisite panna cotta.

The note was written in the same rather beautiful cursive as last time, but now it read something a little different.

_I do hope that you are still enjoying the apartment – please feel free to pop up any time should you have any complaints!_

He wondered, already on his way out of the door, if it was perhaps a little churlish to complain about free baked goods delivered to your door, but he was not a man that very much enjoyed getting something for nothing, and he had always been a little uncomfortable with receiving gifts for no reason, certain that they would come with a later obligation – more often than not, a social one, which was perhaps worse than any other. So he took to the stairs with some determination, following them up above his own floor for the first time until they took him to the very top floor, a narrow corridor with a door painted in a bright, shining green.

He knocked heavily on the wood before he could change his mind, starting a little at the distant call of “Come in, it isn’t locked!”

Thorin hesitated for a moment, before turning the handle gently, already half-hoping that it wouldn’t open. Unfortunately, it did.

The apartment had the same tall ceilings and mouldings as his own, the polished wooden floors half covered by thick, warm rugs, the furniture not too dissimilar than what had come with his own place – all dark wood, solid and antique and very well made. On the walls, painted in various shades of cream and soft greens, were hung a variety of frames, in which were displayed old black-and-white photographs, pressed flowers, small watercolour pictures that looked more as if they had been done by a talented relative than a professional.

He followed the sound of a boiling kettle and footsteps until he found the door that led through to the kitchen. A man was kneeling on the floor behind the counters, rummaging through a cupboard, almost entirely hidden from view. On the countertop was a rather large cake, still steaming a little where it sat on a cooling rack.

He cleared his throat, and the man bounced up on his heels, smiling.

Mr Bilbo – for Thorin could not presume that this was anyone else – did not look entirely as he had expected. The mental image he had painted of a man who left homemade desserts and loose leaf tea on a stranger’s doorstep was of a genteel old man, a little dapper but perhaps also a little frail. Instead, this man looked around the same age as him, with a soft little belly and a head of curls that seemed to have gone a little wayward in the heat emanating from the oven. His eyes were bright, though already drawing into something of a frown, and Thorin found himself trying to relax his posture somewhat – he had drawn himself up in expectation of a conflict, but the realisation that this man was a good head shorter than he made him feel a little overdramatic.

“Thorin Durin,” he introduced himself, a little cautiously. “Your tenant, from 15A?”

The man’s frown immediately disappeared.

“Of course!” he said, stretching a hand across the table, which Thorin took to shake a little cautiously. “I’m Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins.”

“The landlord,” Thorin answered, attempting to keep the conversation on a more serious tone.

“Oh, not really,” Bilbo replied with a wave of his hand, before kneeling down and rifling through his cupboards again, his voice now accompanied by the heavy clunk of pans moving around. “I just… own the house and lease the apartments, that’s all. Terribly sorry about this, by the way – my grinder has run low, and heaven only knows where I’ve left my backup peppercorns.”

Thorin blinked at him. He wasn’t quite sure what to think – that owning and leasing property sounded very much like a landlord to him, or that it seemed unlikely that peppercorns would be kept by the saucepans.

“Aha!” Bilbo exclaimed. “There they are – it’s my various cousins, you see, they like to help, and sometimes they put things in the oddest places.”

Thorin didn’t give any response, still a little confused.

“Do you like Italian?” Bilbo asked, darting over to the hob. The smell of cake had masked anything else, but when he lifted a lid from a large saucepan on the hob a heady wash of meat-tomato-basil-garlic washed over him. The kettle clicked off, the water within bubbling away.

“Of course you do,” Bilbo said, absently stirring. “Everyone likes my ragu. I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t.”

Thorin blinked.

Bilbo unscrewed the lid of his grinder, topping it up with fresh peppercorns with a small smile of satisfaction that was oddly endearing – a thought that Thorin pushed away almost as soon as it had formed.

“I came about-”

“About the apartment! Of course. Is there a problem? Or do you have any requests for additional furniture? There is quite a collection down in the storage area – you’re more than welcome to any of it, I just ask that the people living here sign out what they are using, you know, to keep track of it. Some of it is quite old.”

Bilbo padded across to the fridge, pulling out a package of fresh pasta, which he upended into another empty pan, which he snagged from the still open cupboard. His movements were fluid, oddly graceful as he darted around his kitchen, and Thorin had a feeling that he spent rather a lot of time in this little place, that this was a haven of sorts for the odd landlord, just as his music room was for him.

The water from the kettle was poured unceremoniously onto the pasta, and Bilbo stirred it carefully before pulling two shallow bowls from another cabinet. Thorin wondered if he was expecting guests, if his presence here was not in fact something of an imposition. The rather uncomfortable sensation of anxiety clenched tight in his belly, and he shuffled a little as Bilbo tasted a piece of pasta.

“I came to talk about the gifts, actually,” he said, his voice a little more cold than he had really intended. Bilbo glanced up at him, smiling, as he carried the pasta pan over to a colander already waiting in the sink.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, the steam from the water rising around his face. “Did you like them? I will admit to spending most of my free time learning new recipes, and I have rather started imposing them on my friends.”

“My sister said the panna cotta were good,” he answered, hesitantly, feeling a little wrong-footed by the implication that he and Bilbo were friends. “And my nephews liked the cupcakes, if the amount of icing left on their faces was any indication.”

Bilbo beamed at him, glancing up from where he was now distributing pasta between the two bowls. It was actually rather impressive, Thorin had to admit, to watch him move around his kitchen, almost as if he were watching him dance.

“Nephews!” he said, sounding rather delighted. “How lovely. I have one myself, well, a more recent family addition – he is only a few months old, but I already feel that I will spoil him rotten. How old are yours?”

“Four and nine,” Thorin admitted.

“Now,” Bilbo said, as he began to spoon a thick sauce from the pan on top of the pasta. “I have a memory for these things – my little vanilla pastries, and fudge too. Did you try any of those?”

Thorin felt an embarrassed heat begin to crawl at the back of his neck.

“I gave the pastries to my cousin,” he confessed. “But the fudge was very good.”

Bilbo smiled, then, and pulled cutlery from a drawer.

“So the fudge was what tempted you?” he said, laughter in his voice. “That is very good to know.”

“I don’t have much of a sweet tooth,” he found himself saying, despite himself, realising all of a sudden that he had been completely derailed once more. Bilbo just nodded, deftly picking up both bowls and the cutlery.

“This way!” he called, disappearing through another door, leaving Thorin blinking, wrong-footed once more. After a long moment he trailed out after Bilbo, not knowing anything better to do. Even he could not quite justify just walking out of the apartment, even though he had been known to do some rather impolite things in the past to avoid socialising.

The door led to a comfortable, bright living room, strewn with pot plants and fabrics in rich, earthy tones, with windows along two sides of it that offered a rather fine view of the city beyond. Bilbo had taken a seat in a small table tucked into a nook next to one of those windows, a cosy little spot, with tall-backed, comfortable looking chairs. There was a small vase of flowers catching the sunlight, the plates steamed invitingly and it was becoming increasingly obvious that he was expected to stay for lunch.

Thorin felt his chest sinking.

His family were not entirely wrong when they said that Thorin disliked people, but the issue was something slightly different to that. Since he had been a child he had preferred music to conversation, his violin to friends – extended social interaction left him feeling mildly ill, exhausted, and the older he grew the more he had avoided engaging in such a thing as much as he possibly could. Conversations had become battlefields by the time he was a teenager, strewn with the hidden mines and barbed wire of etiquette that he did not understand or enjoy. His family knew him well enough that talking with them did not bring the same tightening anxiety as other people did, but it was still there, a lingering presence, forcing him to breathe deep, to try and calm his mind as best he could.

His intention in coming up here had been to tackle head on the problem of a friendship being forced on him through pastries and tea. Now it turned out that he was here for lunch.

“Do sit,” Bilbo said, quietly, and perhaps he could sense some of Thorin’s concern, for he was looking across at him now with a small frown between his eyebrows, and when he smiled it was a gentle, kindly thing, his eyes warm, and just for a moment Thorin found them almost comforting.

He took his seat, his eyes on the pale pink chrysanthemums in the vase, but to his surprise Bilbo did not ask him anything, nor did he try to press any further. He simply began to eat, and after a long moment, Thorin did too.

The food really was rather good, he thought to himself, his eyes on the few beyond. The telephone lines running from the corner of the building cut a stark black line against the yellow-grey of the overcast afternoon, the local sandstone of the buildings surrounding them warm, and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards slightly as he watched fat city pigeons line up along the wires, every now and again one startling and fluttering away.

Bilbo seemed to finish his food at an inhuman speed: he did not wait for Thorin, nor did he try to talk, but padded away with his dish and returned a few moments later with two steaming teacups of fragrant coffee, and a little dish with crumbly pieces of fudge. He tucked his feet up on his seat, sat nearly sideways on to the table now, leaning back against the chair back, his head resting against the wall and his eyes on the skyline beyond.

This was… this was almost nice, Thorin couldn’t help but think as he chased the remnants of his sauce around the dish with his last piece of pasta. Quiet, serene almost.

Bilbo did not glance at him when he finished his meal, and he took his own dish back to the kitchen. Bilbo’s was resting in the sink, and he washed them up, quietly, leaving them to dry on the side before returning back to the living room.

The coffee was a good as the stuff that Bilbo had given him the first time round, and despite not having much of a sweet tooth he had always had a fondness for well made, melt-in-the-mouth fudge. He snuck a small piece from the side of the place, irrationally nervous that he would be told off for doing so, but the corner of Bilbo’s mouth only twitched upwards when he caught sight of Thorin’s guilty expression.

“Mr Gamgee says he hears music coming from your apartment sometimes,” Bilbo commented, his voice low. The sunlight pooling through the window was warming Thorin’s skin and turning the twists of Bilbo’s curls copper-gold in their light.

It wasn’t a question, and his tone was gentle enough that Thorin rather thought he could have gotten away without replying at all, but he took a fortifying sip of his coffee, and did so anyway.

“I’m a violinist,” he answered. “And I’m teaching my nephews the piano, on the nights they spend here.”

Bilbo’s mouth twitched, and the creased around his eyes grew deeper, his gaze warmer, as if picturing the image and finding great pleasure in it.

“Are they here often?”

“Every Thursday night,” Thorin admitted, after a moment. “Both their mother’s work late shifts on Thursdays and Fridays, so they stay with me on one night, and with my brother the next.”

He shut his mouth with a snap, well aware that that was more information than he had ever volunteered to a stranger before now, and he tensed, swallowing the last of his coffee quickly to try and hide his discomfort.

It didn’t seem to work – Bilbo shot him a small, understanding smile.

“I know I have kept you far too late,” he said, and Thorin felt his shoulders un-tense, just a little. “And I have to get back to work myself, unfortunately.”

Thorin tried very hard not to get to his feet too quickly, for he found that he actually did not want to offend the other man. It had been a very, very long time since he had spent a hour with stranger that did not leave him feeling entirely drained, and there was a small, rather scared part of himself that was thinking that he actually wouldn’t mind seeing Bilbo again.

He trailed after the landlord, back into the hallway, and down to the front door, where Bilbo hesitated, for just a moment.

“I wonder,” he said, a little cautiously. “I do end up baking rather a lot, and if your nephews are over on Thursdays – would you mind terribly if I offloaded some of goods on them? I promise to cover them with as much icing and chocolate as possible – you’ll definitely be the most popular uncle in town.” This came with a self-depreciating little smile, and before he could stop himself he nodded, and muttered a word of thanks, before he slipped out of the door.

 

* * *

 

By the time Thursday rolled around Thorin had worked himself into quite a state worrying – indeed, on Wednesday night he ended up in his music room until three in the morning, unable to sleep. There was a very large part of him worried that Bilbo would knock on the door this time, that Thorin would have to have a conversation with him, but almost worse was the part of himself that wanted Bilbo to do exactly that.

Therefore, it was with a very mixed set of emotions that he returned to his apartment with his two nephews in tow to see no package delicately wrapped and sitting jauntily on his doorstep. Fili, an intuitive child, tugged on his Uncle’s hand in concern when they paused for a moment in the hallway.

“Sorry lad,” he said, his voice he knew softer than it was with any other person, and dropped Fili’s hand in order to find his keys, to let them in.

Thorin liked children – he found there was a simplicity to speaking with them, for they were always straightforward with what they wanted, always honest in their expectations of you. And thankfully, both his young nephews never did seem to want anything that he wasn’t able to give, though he was unable to tell whether this was because the boys didn’t want for a lot, or if he there was just very little that he didn’t want to give them (he suspected that it was a little of both).

Kili toed his shoes off in the doorway before flying off down the corridor, his coat still on. Fili, old enough now to try and act older than he was, rolled his eyes fondly as he bent to unlace his own shoes (having graduated from Velcro straps just a few weeks beforehand). From deeper in the apartment came the tentative, clumsy notes of the piano, played by Kili’s still rather unskilled fingers.

“Ma said she’d buy us a piano for Christmas if we were good,” Fili told him, as he took off his coat. “If she does, can we still come over and practise with you?”

Thorin nodded, pulling off his gloves with his teeth.

“And we can practise on Sundays when I go to your house, too.”

Fili beamed.

“Does that mean we’ll get really good really quickly?”

Thorin smiled, just a little, and ruffled his nephew’s hair affectionately.

“Sure thing.”

Fili dated off after his brother then. A tentative knock at the door sounded just as a second pair of hands joined the first on the piano, and Thorin’s stomach lurched. For a long moment he considered not opening the front door at all, but he rather suspected that the sound of the piano would have been audible in the corridor, so in the end he steeled his nerves and opened it, a strange mixture of dread and hope coursing through his veins, his heartbeat loud in his ears.

Bilbo was standing on the other side of the door, a neatly wrapped box stuffed precariously under one arm, his hands rather taken up by the small infant wrapped up in blankets that he was currently carrying.

“Sorry,” he said. “I meant to drop some cakes around earlier, but I got a little waylaid by this little fellow – his mum had something come up at the last minute, and seeing as how I work from home and on my own schedule it seems I rather end up in line for babysitting duty.”

Thorin peered around the swathes of fabric, trying to catch a peek of the little thing wrapped up inside.

“That’s alright,” he replied, distracted at least a little from his gnawing fear by the baby. “We only just got in.”

Bilbo smiled at him, looking up at him through curls that looked as if they had had hands run through them several times already today, and tried a little awkwardly and rather unsuccessfully to shift the package from under his arm.

There was something very tight constricting his chest, but he swallowed it down as much as he could.

“Would you like to come in?”

He let the air out of his chest in a rush that he knew Bilbo must have heard, but the other man just nodded gratefully, stepping carefully in and wandering off in the direction of the living room at Thorin’s nod. He followed him, at once regretting and feeling almost a little proud of himself for having asked Bilbo inside. Bilbo’s nephew made a little whimpering sound when Bilbo lay him carefully down on the sofa cushions, stirring just a little but not enough to wake.

“There now,” Bilbo said, just as the sound of the piano from the music room faded away, and footsteps ran in their direction.

“Uncle Thorin!” called Kili, his voice echoing through the corridor as he ran towards them. “Uncle Thorin, what’s for dinner?”

Thorin scooped the boy up as he ran at his Uncle’s knees, hefting him up into his arms and nuzzling at his face with his own stubbly chin until the boy laughed and tried to push him away.

“Shall we order pizza?” he asked, and Kili made a noise of agreement, his attention caught by the other people in the room. Suddenly shy, he buried his face in Thorin’s neck, peering out at Bilbo. Thorin huffed as Fili, who he hadn’t noticed sneak in, also hid against Thorin’s side.

“This is Bilbo,” he told them, knowing that they were waiting for an explanation. “He’s my… friend.”

 Bilbo glanced at him, looking a little startled, but any regrets that Thorin might have had for calling him that dissipated as his gaze turned just a little soft.

“Hullo boys,” he said to them both, quietly. “This is my little nephew, here. His name is Frodo.”

Fili was the first to peel away, padding closer to peer at the tiny sleeping bundle.

“He’s very little,” he commented, and Bilbo nodded.

“He’ll grow up quickly though, just like you boys.”

“Do you live here?” Fili asked, still peering at the baby.

Bilbo smiled.

“I do.”

“Uncle Thorin used to live in our building, but then the man who owned the flat came back and he had to move.”

Bilbo nodded, thoughtfully, and Kili peered out, just a little more, at the sound of the man having a serious conversation with Fili, without dismissing him or talking down to him.

Fili glanced up at Bilbo.

“Ma says that Uncle Thorin really left because he doesn’t like talking to the neighbours though.”

Bilbo blinked, and then made a rather inelegant sound that was most likely a repressed snort of laughter, and Thorin pressed a kiss to Kili’s fine dark hair to avoid looking at him.

“Is that so?” he asked, and Fili nodded, very seriously, before smiling brightly.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

Bilbo caught his eye, and after a long moment, Thorin nodded, swallowing just a little.

In the end, Bilbo refused to let Thorin order in, saying that he had several homemade pizzas in the fridge upstairs, and that he could bring them down and cook them here. Bilbo had already presented the elaborately decorated chocolate cupcakes to the boys, who were tucking in to them rapturously, but he promised to bring something else down for them, waving off Thorin’s protests.

Bilbo left Frodo on the sofa under Thorin’s watchful eye whilst he nipped upstairs, but the baby began to stir only moments after he had left. That was why, just a short while later, Bilbo came back to the sight of his tiny nephew in the large, careful hands of his tenant, whilst he sang quietly to the young baby, who was staring up at Thorin with wide, blue eyes.

Thorin was glad that Bilbo didn’t seem to be annoyed at him for holding the little one – he had had plenty of experience with his own boys, after all, and he couldn’t bear to sit by when Frodo began to cry – but he was even more grateful that Bilbo made no comment, just padded away to the kitchen, to put the oven on, several hand-stretched pizzas balanced in his hands. Thorin continued to sing quietly, his own two boys coming to sit on the sofa beside him, both of them peering at the baby with some fascination.

“You used to be that little,” Fili told Kili, who made a noise of protest.

“I couldn’t have been!” he retorted, and Thorin huffed a laugh.

“You both used to be.”

Kili bit his lip, seemingly unsure, but a sound from the kitchen distracted him.

“Uncle,” he said after a moment, turning back to them. “I like Mr Bilbo. Does he make those cakes himself?”

Thorin nodded, absently pressing a whiskery kiss to Frodo’s nose. The little boy squawked at him, his wide eyes shining with interest as he glanced between the three new faces.

“Do you think he’ll teach me to make them?” Kili whispered.

“Of course I will,” came Bilbo’s voice, from the doorway. Thorin glanced up, surprised, wondering how long Bilbo had been watching them. “Dinner is ready now, by the way, but if your Uncle doesn’t mind, I could come around next week, and show you both.”

Kili nodded eagerly, and in the face of such enthusiasm Thorin found it impossible to protest. Bilbo’s hand was warm when it pressed against Thorin’s arm in thanks as he took the infant back, before following the excited boys towards the kitchen, and the promise of pizza.

 

* * *

 

Bilbo was as good as his word. There was no baby in his arms next week – Thorin had to pretend not to be a little disappointed in that – and this time, when he opened the door, he thought that the anxiety building in his chest was less than it had been even the week before. He found himself watching Bilbo carefully as the man carefully measured out ingredients with the boys, wondering what it was about him that made – well, still not easy, not all the time, but significantly easier.

He had a lot of time to try and figure it out. There wasn’t just those first two weeks after all, but the week after too, when the boys convinced Bilbo to come over to show them how to make pizza. They covered Thorin’s kitchen (and Thorin himself) in flour, eating their body weight in the pizzas that they had meticulously covered in an odd selection of toppings. He tried a slice each of theirs, as did Bilbo, and praised them for their cooking, before tucking into the slightly more palatable one that Bilbo had made for the two of them, sharing a glance of wry amusement across the dining table before Thorin was forced to look away, flushing at the casual intimacy of it all, as if he and Bilbo had known each other for years.

Then the next Thursday, the boys insisted on Bilbo joining them for a film. They had spoken about this particular cinematic offering at great length with Bilbo over pizza, and both of them had been somewhat disgusted at his lack of education in animated films, and seemed they had decided to resolve it. So Bilbo sat on the opposite end of the sofa to Thorin, the two of them bracketing the boys. It had been a very long day for Thorin – he had slept very poorly the night before, anxious about a social event that he had been forced to attend that afternoon that had exhausted him entirely – and he blamed that on the fact that he fell asleep on the sofa, missing the bulk of _The Incredibles_ until Kili’s excited voice woke him up in time for the conclusion.

Bilbo had smiled at him, a little amused, across the top of the boy’s heads, and Thorin had flushed with embarrassment, shocked that he had felt comfortable enough in his presence to sleep.

That was not the end of it, either – the next week Bilbo mentioned to him that he would be looking after Frodo when they pass on the stairs, as if worried that Thorin would miss him when Thursday evening rolled around (and Thorin would not like to admit it, but he thought that he would, for Bilbo had slipped so successfully into their life, as if there had been a slot there, waiting for him). Thorin made the mistake of mentioning this to the boys, who would not rest until they had dragged Thorin upstairs to Bilbo’s apartment, to see just how big the baby had grown since they saw him last (the verdict is not very, but they seemed to get over their disappointment quickly enough when Bilbo offered them his cookie jar).

And between those Thursday nights, they saw each other more and more. At first it was just in passing, on the stairwell, or when Bilbo dropped off a small package of homemade fudge or coffee beans or a savoury tart (he was quick to learn what people like and don’t, Thorin realised soon enough). But soon enough Bilbo began to pop around with a book that he had mentioned, or to borrow an album that Thorin had described, and inevitably tea or coffee was made and the two sat in one or the other’s living room, sometimes reading quietly, or listening to music, and occasionally even talking.

Soon enough he gave in to Bilbo’s gentle entreaties and played for him, his eyes on the ceiling or staring out the window, only occasionally darting back, but it was fine, because Bilbo always lay back on the sofa when Thorin’s violin was singing, his eyes closed, a small smile playing around his mouth that never quite went away.

“That was beautiful,” he said, the first time Thorin played for him, and unlike many of the other compliments he has received over the years this one feels startlingly genuine, and he blushes as Bilbo brushes as hand against his, his smile encouraging.

He learnt about Bilbo, over those weeks, as well – not just because Bilbo told him, but also because, over time, Thorin began to ask, tentative and at times anxious, but Bilbo always smiled at him, nodding along carefully as Thorin asked, making him believe that his words were worth hearing.

He found out that Bilbo was an illustrator and children’s novelist, and that he baked and cooked the most when he was going through periods of writers block or lacking inspiration in one way or another. He discovered that Bilbo grews plants on a private rooftop garden and that his favourite flowers were sunflowers, that he had always wanted children but felt like he had probably left it too late now (a sentiment that Thorin secretly shared). He learns that Bilbo was orphaned quite young but had a large and nosy extended family, that he studied Classical Archaeology at University on a whim.

And he learned more by watching, too – that Bilbo had an endless patience with the boys, that he drank coffee quickly but tea slowly, that he hummed when he wasn't paying attention to the world around him, that his eyes weren't actually quite brown as he might have presumed, but soft and shifting hazel.

Thorin had never been comfortable with anyone that was not his immediate family: he had some good friends, but even with them he knew that he would feel uncomfortable most of the time. Some days it felt to him that he had never had any social interaction with another adult that had not left him anxious, or tired, although he knows logically that that cannot be the case.

But everything with Bilbo was easy. He knew when to stop asking questions, and seemed very content with silence between them when replying became something of a struggle for Thorin. He was intuitive too, when it came to Thorin and the boys and anyone else around them – he isn’t even sure if Bilbo’s inherent understanding of the way that people felt is even really a conscious one, or if he just picked up on these things naturally, and though there was a small part of him that felt envy at Bilbo’s ease with people, it rarely reared its head.

He found himself grateful that he had met him, instead.

 

* * *

 

“Are you going to marry Bilbo?” Fili asked him, one Thursday afternoon – and god, Thorin had lost track how many Thursdays with Bilbo there had been by this point. He spluttered, immediately glancing around them to make sure that no one has overheard, but Bilbo is in the kitchen with Kili whilst listens to Fili practise his scales.

“What gives you that idea?” he asked, almost a whisper, his eyes darting to the door that leads to the hallway.

Fili shrugged, his fingers still moving precisely up and down the keys – with more refinement than Thorin knows he had at that age, with a skill that thankfully he has not yet seen fit to abandon. It is one of Thorin’s secret dears, that his nephews will stop caring for music, that he will lose the link that they share.

“You look at him like Ma and Mum look at each other when they’re being all gross,” he answered, with the honesty of a child. “And Ma said that she asked Mum to marry her because she can’t imagine coming home and not having her there, and I can’t imagine coming over here without Bilbo being here any more.”

Thorin cleared his throat, putting several thoughts that had sprung into his mind right to the very back of it, trying not to consider further the implication of Fili’s words.

“Does it bother you that Bilbo is here every week?” he asked, worrying for a moment until Fili shot him the kind of look that children reserve for adults when they say something completely idiotic.

“No,” he replied, scathingly, and Thorin’s mouth twists up despite himself at how quickly Fili is growing up. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t _ask_ him to come over all the time.”

Thorin nodded, and placed a new sheaf of music on the stand, pointing at it. Fili’s eyes brightened when he realised that Thorin had decided that he had practised his scales enough for one day, and immediately began picking out the notes in the new piece, something a little more challenging that should keep him occupied for a couple of weeks yet.

“ _You_ never ask him to come over though,” he told Thorin, a little accusingly, and Thorin blinked.

He had never really thought about that before, but he supposed that he hadn’t, not really – he had nodded his assent when Bilbo had invited them to his, or when the boys demanded Bilbo’s presence, and of course he had always let Bilbo in when he turned up at his door, and now he ends up accepting the invitations to visit Bilbo in his apartment, too.

But he hasn’t yet asked, and as soon as he realises this he also realises that he wants to, more than anything.

The thought scares him a little – it is that one last stanza in the poem of socialisation, he thinks, to initiate some sort of social interaction, and though he tries several times to build up the nerve to do so over the following few weeks, he always finds that the old beast of anxiety rears its head at the last moment, chorusing a constant litany of self-doubt in his mind – _he is just being nice he doesn’t actually want to spend time with you he just doesn’t want to say no to the boys he doesn’t like you why would someone as marvellous as he is actually like you?_

Which means that their conversations become uncomfortably silted as Thorin trails off, his stomach clenching until he is forced to retreat, with Bilbo watching him with a little frown of confusion. It is making things awkward – and Bilbo can tell, it is obvious enough, which just makes him feel even worse.

By the end of the second week of these attempts to show Bilbo how he feels by suggesting that they do something together (and he knows, rationally, that Bilbo probably knows just from the time that they have already spent in each other’s company, but he has never been described as a rational man before), he is quite certain that Bilbo has started avoiding him, just a little, no doubt unsure what exactly has happened to their easy friendship.

“Pull your head out of your arse,” Dis tells him, when he tries to explain, and then her face softens when she catches sight of his expression.

“Oh love,” she says, realising now that perhaps this is something more important than Thorin has led her to believe. “Fili said that he was special, but I didn’t realise he was special to you, and not just the boys.”

Thorin nods, a little morose, and she pushes coffee across the breakfast bar of her kitchen to him, her face twisting in sympathy and love.

“You know,” she says, quietly. “I found that flowers worked pretty well with Vivi.”

Thorin bites his lip, and she ruffles his hair gently.

 

* * *

 

He buys sunflowers on his way home from work a few days later.

Normally, he would have returned straight to his apartment and spent his evening in his own company, perhaps hoping just a little that Bilbo might stop by, but today he does not allow himself to pause at his floor, but keeps going up, coat and gloves and all, because he knows that if he stops to drop them off he will talk himself out of it. He pulls his headphones out of his ears as he reaches Bilbo’s door, knocking quickly.

“It’s open!” comes the cheerful voice, just like the very first time he came here, and Thorin swallows, nervous, before padding inside.

Bilbo isn’t in the kitchen, this time, though there are smears of icing sugar on the countertops which suggest that he has been there quite recently. Instead, he finds Bilbo curled up on the sofa, a book of poetry open on his lap, and when he glances up to see Thorin hovering in the doorway he smiles, and perhaps he can tell that there is something different about him today, for he takes a deep breath, as if about to say something, only to falter.

Instead, he looks back down at his page.

“ _You ask why I love you_ ,” he reads aloud, and his reading glasses are a little crooked on his nose, a smear of sugar by his mouth, his voice so warm that the hairs on the back of Thorin’s neck stand on end, just a little. “ _For this_.”

And then he looks back up at Thorin, his eyes pinning him in place, and though thinks that he should feel trapped, he realises that he doesn’t, at all.

“ _You are a minute of quiet_ ,” Bilbo continues, his smile widening at something that he sees on Thorin’s face. “ _In a loud shouting world_.”

They stare at each other, for just a moment.

“That’s quite nice, isn’t it?” Bilbo asks, and Thorin nods, before he remembers the flowers in his hands and holds them out, so Bilbo can take them.

“I was wondering,” he asks, hesitant, and still a little unsure. The beast is still roaring in his chest, but the sight of Bilbo's warm smile seems to quieten it, just a little, and the irony of the line that Bilbo read is not lost on him. “If perhaps you would like to do something with me, this evening?”

And it seems like Bilbo actually understands – perhaps he had noticed how one-sided their invitations had been in the past, perhaps too he has been wondering why Thorin has been so strange of late, has been trying to dissect their painful last few encounters, and this has finally explained things to him.

He unwinds from the sofa and his blanket, abandoning his glasses on the table.

There are small red marks on his nose from where they have pressed too hard, and Thorin fights the sudden urge to touch them with his fingertip, with his mouth.

“I would love to do something,” Bilbo says, gently, taking the sunflowers from Thorin with careful hands that brush against Thorin’s knuckles, sending a flicker of warmth down his spine. “Anything you would like, in fact.”

His smile has a flicker of amusement in it, and Thorin has to fight down a blush when Bilbo’s hand cups his cheek, drawing him down slowly, to press a kiss against his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem that Bilbo reads is 'For This', by Gabriel Gadfly, which is of course also where the title of this fic comes from.


End file.
